In two separate initiatives, pan-European network services provider AUCS Communications Services NV, US internet content provider Akamai Technologies Inc and portal site Yahoo! Inc have been offering their services to charity. Hoofddorp, Netherlands-based AUCS and Akamai, from Cambridge Massachusetts despite its Hawaiian name, are collaborating with the NetAid initiative aimed at ending extreme poverty. AUCS said it has deployed Akamai servers and will be donating bandwidth to support traffic to the NetAid web site, which will carry out what is predicted to be the world’s largest webcast for the NetAid concert on October 9.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! Inc has teamed with UK charity Oxfam to launch a free internet access service, for which all the access provider income from the local call charges will be donated by the portal site to the charity. The service, called Yahoo! Online with Oxfam is being advertised as a way of donating to charity while surfing the web.